Bottom-up tuition

I know from my own time at university, undergraduates were expected to study five chosen units within their degree area in each of the three years to gain a qualification. The units and their content varied between subjects - and no doubt universities - but in general, each of those five units was taught to students through two one hour lectures and an hours tutorial (a group of around 8 students meeting a tutor) each week. That's 15 hours of formal tuition - well under half of a normal 40 hour working week. And I have certainly come across courses with considerably less tuition time. Its true we were expected to produce a number of essays and took exams at the end of each year, but managing our time and the way it was used was left entirely up to students. But then of course, our three years at university was free. Full grants covered both tuition fees and modest accommodation - usually something resembling a squat - and we were grateful. I never heard of any complaint throughout the time I was there. How things will change.

If students are to directly repay up to £9000 for each year of tuition they receive, they will certainly be demanding value for money. Universities will need to respond. Firstly through a range of more flexible degree courses designed to suit the lives of their learners - not university lecturers. From distance learning, to two year intensive timetables without the usual 20 weeks of holiday, universities will need to offer students what suits them if they are to attract the students to pay for undergraduate studies.

Secondly, within those courses universities will need to offer a level of content that the Facebook generation find both fulfilling and stretching. £9000 should buy you an extensive and highly personal curriculum combining lectures (from senior Professors rather than PhD students obviously) with at least half an hour of open Q & A at the end, at least some 1-2-1 tutorials, personal tutors aimed at matching time management with the universities resources - libraries, archives, laboratories etc - as much as general pastoral care, regularly organised presentations by students to peer groups after research work into specific areas of deeper study within courses, and perhaps even multi-disciplined (across faculty) weekly discussions and debates undertaken by student groups looking at academic issues from differing perspectives. They might even move to the American system of grade point averages whereby grades for each individual assignment throughout the year contribute to the student's overall mark. This ensures both efficient time management and consistent effort throughout the year - not the ubiquitous eight months of alcoholic haze followed by  four weeks of intense revision for an exam.

As students remain content to demonstrate about their having to repay up to £9000 of tuition fees, universities have time to consider the implications. Sometime soon, universities are going to have to start thinking seriously about what that might mean.

Is the BBC a threat to plurality & independence?

State-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy claimed James Murdoch to widespread derision from the mainstream media in his MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August 2009. Today we might begin to understand what he meant.

Right across the BBC - numerous TV channels, more than thirty radio stations & volumes of online content - the agenda continues unabated: who will rebel against the government on tuition fees? And you would be forgiven for thinking that the outcome will alter all our lives irrevocably for the worse. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ordinary people up and down this country think it's a no-brainer. Students, who benefit enormously from a degree qualification and will be earning over £21,000 before they are asked to pay something back, should shoulder a greater amount of that cost than the low paid. The low paid of course, currently pay for that degree and will never have the opportunity to earn that amount in their lifetime. Its called fairness, and its about time the BBC began to reflect what ordinary people think. Not just the sectional interests of a small but vociferous minority which fits their way of thinking.

A year ago at the Copenhagen climate conference, an army of correspondents dominated news bulletins reporting every last disagreement and suggesting that without an agreed outcome, the world would come to an end. A year later in Cancun, the BBC report nothing. Nothing on climate change that is. Only that Chris Huhn might vote against tuition fees. From Mexico.

Could this have anything to do with the coldest winter for 30 years and records showing no global warming has occured over the last 15 years despite increasing levels of CO2 emmissions?  No? That's just 'weather' not 'climate' right? Or is it just another example of editorial group-think? Similar to the much-criticised group-think amongst bankers that led to the greatest financial disaster for sixty years?

The power of the BBC is enormous. Its involved in every major area of our lives, setting the environment in which events are reported, discussed and decided upon. We need to be constantly questioning whether the BBC is reporting news in an unbiased and honest way. Or does it have an agenda set by group-think? Is it involved in a form of social engineering for its own sectional interests?

Organised hypocrisy

Determined to stay on the wrong side of this argument, Ed Miliband continues his slow car crash on tuition fees at PMQ's.

'An organised hypocrisy' counters Cameron in a really devastating line showing the duplicity of Labour in firstly introducing fees when they had pledged not-to in their previous manifesto - where have we heard that one before? - and in rejecting the recommendations of the Browne report they themselves commissioned in a cross-party consensus when in government.

The LibDems need to take the argument to the people, not abstain from it

LibDem talk of abstaining or voting against increased tuition fees is just wrong. If you believe in something, then you need to take it to the people and argue why it is right. And this proposal for university funding is right in so many ways.

Firstly it puts the funding of our universities on a stable and sustainable basis for their long-term future, something which successive governments - unwilling to make courageous decisions that require robust and intelligent arguments - have ducked over many years. This proposal allows us to build and sustain world class, research-based universities which are essential to the country's future.

Secondly, it is not about tripling the cost of higher education as so many naive freshers seem to think. The cost of university education is not changing. We are simply deciding how that education should be funded. Whether it should be from general taxation by all taxpayers irrespective of means, or increasingly by students, who are substantial and lifelong beneficiaries of a university education, not least in their earning abilities.

This proposal goes to the heart of a fair society. It is about students accepting greater responsibility for their good fortune by shouldering a higher proportion of the funding from their enhanced earnings. Starting above £21,000 per year. Well above the pay of dinner ladies who currently pay for the university education of our largely middle class children.

Both students and the Labour opposition are on the wrong side of this argument. Not only are these proposals fairer - ensuring that those 'with the broadest shoulders' provide proportionately more funding - they are also progressive. Far more progressive than the current arrangements introduced by Labour. They enhance the participation of poorer students, cover part-time courses and ensure that as tuition fee's move towards their highest permitted levels, wider engagement is actively sought. 

Like so much else that is now being re-evaluated of Labour's thirteen years of expensive, centralised, statist orthodoxy, the most we can say is that they may have had the right intentions. But lazy, self-righteous hysteria against anything proposed by this Liberal-Conservative Coalition who represent 59% of the electorate, is worth fighting. Not abstaining from.

Pot, kettle, black

Is this the winter of LibDem discontent? writes Left Foot Forward with as much self-satisfied glee at the misfortune of the LibDems as possible. And this from the party who promised no tuition fees in their 1997 manifesto, then introduced them once they came to power. Ah, but that's not a pledge is it? Just a manifesto commitment.

The politics of selfishness

Really sad scenes in Whitehall today as students - whose intelligence would suggest that they should know better - protesting at increased tuition fees in a package that is not only far more progressive than present arrangements, but nearer to NUS demands than anything Labour enacted in thirteen years of government. Moreover, the 1997 manifesto had promised not to introduce tuition fees.

Students really need to convince the country through reason and argument exactly why people on modest incomes - dinner ladies on ten or twelve thousand say - should pay for the education of students whose degrees will enable them to earn vastly greater sums. This is the politics of selfishness that intelligent students should feel ashamed of. How sad.

NUS & tuition fees

Thanks to @OllyGrender for pointing ot this excellent blog on tuition fees. Reasons why the NUS's protest is wrong:

• It is impossible for all the students on the march and everyone commenting to have voted Lib Dem, if they had we probably would have been in Government. Surely the argument about the pledge is then a Lib Dem problem?
• Tuition rises is a Coalition policy, so why should Nick Clegg be hounded out?
• Tuition fees were introduced by Labour (as I understand it, even though they promised NO tuition fees) did NUS react the same then?
• Browne report was commissioned by Labour (and before I get comments on it, I know that they didn’t have to implement its findings)
• The pledge was signed and policies were Lib Dem policy, yes and if we were in sole Government would have been adopted. We are not, we are part of a Coalition Government and are a junior partner at that.
• An intelligent guess, may I suggest that without LD influence there may have not been a cap put in place, as I was told yesterday though, I can’t prove it.
• The majority of the students on that march will not be affected by the tuition fees rise as they will have left before they are brought in. A noble gesture or a chance for NUS to ‘have a go’?

Read it here.